Assistant Headteacher - Raising Standards Lead

Leadership scale: L8

Approximately 50% teaching commitment

Mathematics specialism - including higher tier GCSE

Overview

Sunnydown School is a specialist school for boys aged 11–16 with EHCP's centred on communication and interaction needs.

We are a small school with big ambitions for our students, and we are looking for an exceptional mathematics teacher and ambitious leader to join us as our new Assistant Headteacher – Raising Standards Lead.

This is a new post and a significant appointment for Sunnydown School.

We have spent considerable time sharpening our curriculum, strengthening teaching and establishing a clear vision for what excellent learning should look like. Our next step is to become increasingly forensic about standards, progress and outcomes.

We want someone who will help us answer three deceptively simple questions:

• How well is every student achieving?
• How do we know?
• What are we doing when he isn't achieving as well as he should?

The Role

Reporting directly to the Deputy Headteacher for Teaching, Learning & Curriculum, you will become Sunnydown School's PiXL Raising Standards Lead and take operational leadership of standards and student progress across the school.

Your remit will span every subject and every year group, with particular oversight of the core subjects of English, mathematics and science.

You will lead a rigorous cycle of:

Accurate baseline → ambitious target → assessment → diagnosis → intervention → reassessment → impact

This isn't a role about producing spreadsheets or collecting data for its own sake. We want someone who can turn information into action.

You will ensure that starting points are accurate, that targets are appropriately ambitious and that teacher assessment gives us a reliable picture of what students know and can do.

You will identify where individual students, cohorts or subjects are not making sufficient progress; challenge assumptions; work alongside teachers and subject leaders to understand why; and ensure that action follows.

Most importantly, you will keep asking whether that action has actually made a difference.

Diagnose. Intervene. Test. Learn

You will lead our use of PiXL's Diagnose, Therapy, Testing (DTT) approach.

Assessment and question-level analysis should allow us to identify precisely what a student has not yet understood. You will use that information to inform and direct the work of our Academic Support Teacher, ensuring that additional academic support is targeted where it can make the greatest difference.

Intervention at Sunnydown School should never simply mean giving a student more work.

It should mean identifying a specific gap, teaching precisely what is needed, giving the student the opportunity to practise and then establishing whether he has learned it.

You will oversee that cycle, evaluate its impact and ensure that what we learn through intervention feeds back into classroom teaching.

You will still be a teacher

We think that matters.

Approximately half of your timetable will remain dedicated to teaching mathematics.

You will be an excellent practitioner who is confident teaching across the ability range and, importantly, able to teach Higher Tier GCSE Mathematics.

You will therefore lead standards from a position of genuine classroom credibility.

You will understand the challenge of adapting teaching for an individual student while maintaining academic ambition. You will know that high support and high expectations are not opposites.

Our Teaching & Learning approach is explicit about this: we adapt the pathway rather than lowering the ambition for the student. 

Why Sunnydown School?

Because small schools can do things differently.

With a student body of fewer than 100, you can genuinely know the young people behind the data.

A student isn't a line on a spreadsheet.

You can know his starting point. You can understand what is getting in his way. You can talk to the people teaching him. You can put something different in place. And you can see whether it actually makes a difference.

Our students have EHCPs and may need teaching adapted significantly to enable them to access learning. But understanding need must never become an excuse for lowering aspiration.

Our Teaching & Learning framework is built around three connected ambitions:

Exceptional Teaching. Meaningful Learning. Successful Futures.

It places high-quality instruction, adaptive teaching, challenge, independence and high aspirations at the centre of our approach. 

When a student isn't making progress, we don't simply accept it. Our approach is to notice, explore, gather evidence, work collaboratively and then implement, review and adjust our response. 

The Raising Standards Lead will sit at the heart of making that happen consistently across Sunnydown School.

Who are we looking for?

• is an excellent mathematics teacher, including at Higher Tier GCSE;
• has exceptionally high expectations of what students with SEND can achieve;
• understands assessment and knows the difference between useful evidence and simply having more data;
• understands the importance of establishing accurate starting points and appropriately ambitious academic targets;
• is confident challenging inaccurate assessment, weak progress and unnecessarily low expectations;
• can interrogate assessment information and turn analysis into practical action;
• understands that intervention must be precise, purposeful and evaluated;
• can work collaboratively while also being prepared to ask difficult questions;
• is excited by the potential of PiXL and DTT rather than seeing them as additional systems to administer;
• wants to influence standards across an entire school while continuing to teach;
• believes that excellent teaching, strong relationships and high expectations belong together.

You don't necessarily need to have worked in a special school before.

You do need to believe that students with additional needs deserve the same intellectual ambition, subject expertise and quality of education as their peers.

A chance to build something

This isn't a vacancy created because someone else has left.

It is a new leadership post created because Sunnydown School is ready for its next stage.

You will have the opportunity to shape our approach to raising standards, develop how we use PiXL and DTT, strengthen our use of baseline and assessment information, develop targeted academic intervention and help establish an increasingly rigorous culture around progress and outcomes.

You will work alongside the Deputy Headteacher for Teaching, Learning & Curriculum, with the opportunity to influence practice across the school while retaining the classroom teaching that keeps you connected to the students and to the realities of learning.

In a school with fewer than 100 students, your impact will not disappear into a large system. You will be able to see the difference your leadership makes.

If you are an excellent mathematics teacher who is ready for greater leadership responsibility, or an existing leader looking for a role where you can have a tangible whole-school impact, we would very much like to meet you.